Personal blog of Prasad Ajinkya

Menu

Rise of Nations: Raiding

So I was talking to King Ameya (who often comments on my Rise of Nations posts). He was mentioning that the previous post on Heavy Cavalry was actually a lesson on raiding.

For those who are new to the game, raiding is a concept where you use a small armed force to take down the economy of the opposing nation by attacking commercial resources (merchants, caravans, timber mill, mines, etc). That way, you generate resources whereas your opponent is struggling to get off a good start.

At the advanced levels, rushing is considered to be an amateur tactic and a pro can easily fend off a rush. What works instead is constant raiding and an expert can actually bring down opponents by doing this the entire game.

The best way to showcase this is by giving you a recording of a game that I played with King Ameya. He was Iroquois and I was Bantu. It was pre-decided that he is going to raid and I thought that let’s boom for a change and see how much could a raid impact my economy.

See for yourself!

At the end of the game, I had four cities, but virtually zero resources and no barracks to fend myself. Two of those cities fell at the same time and I had to give in. Raiding can be lethal if carried out properly.

Some points to note –

Scout early and scout often; by the 3rd minute Ameya had the entire map scoured and almost all the ruins were consumed for resources

Small attacks, first aimed at merchants and caravans, then at villagers and resources

Related

Post navigation

:P That was ancient raid and ideal start for irq’s. Best way to defend this raid is to go barracks asap else control villi’s well so that none dies. Keeping 2 villi’s inside city makes it fire arrows. So save villi’s, caravans and merchants and kill the raiding army. With Bantu also U can get the same start. And U can raze 2nd city and make it ahead of ur 3rd one…grabbing territory. :)